I hit a snag at work today while trying to create a scheduled task to run a batch file daily on a server.  The problem was after creating a scheduled task using the wizard, a popup displayed this:

The new task could not be created.
The specific error is:
0×80070005: Access is denied.
Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.

Of course, the task wasn’t created.  Googling around wasn’t much help…most of the stuff references Windows XP and a bunch of the results want you to go inside the registry.  I figured there must be a better way.  Something that all the posts had in common was saying that something had changed the permissions on the Windows Tasks directory.  So, I figured running CACLS to reset the permissions on that tasks directory should fix things.  I was right.  So this fix is MUCH simpler than all those forum posts and mailing lists posts said.

To fix:  Open up a command prompt and change directory to C:\WINDOWS.  Next issue the following command:

 CACLS Tasks /E /G builtin\administrators:F

it should echo back ‘processed dir: C\WINDOWS\Tasks’ and return you to a prompt.  After this, you should be able to schedule a task quite easily.  The skinny of this problem is that the tasks directory just gets its permissions wrong and you’re using CACLS to reset things.  Hope this helps someone out there!  It took me a couple hours to figure it out!

I’m getting pretty used to powershell in my day to day workings with Exchange.  Today however, I was helping a user out on a PC in a different department and I needed to find all of the members of a specific security group.  Sure, I could remote back into my work PC and launch ADUC but I’d rather be able to query it with a single query…all from right there using her computer with the limited user account.

Thanks to powershell, I now think in pipes…while I’ve always done this with Linux, I’ve never had to do so with Windows.  It’s almost like wearing two caps at the same time.  Nonetheless, I was able to figure out how to do this after 3 or 4 attempts and then output it to a file so I could see members of the security group and I did so without the power of powershell (ba-dum-ching!)

I used dsquery and piped the command using dsget to grab the information I needed and then output that into a text file onto the desktop.  Important to note that you should open the command window using ‘run as’.  So in XP, browse to Start >> Programs >> Accessories and then right click ‘command prompt’ and ‘run as’ with elevated privileges.  You’ll need to be able to view the group you’re querying.  I used my own user since I’m a domain admin…you get the idea.  Once you have the command prompt, cd to Desktop so the text file will be easy to find.  Then initiate the following command:

dsquery group -name GroupName |dsget group -members |dsget user -display >memberlist.txt

Substitute for GroupName and put in the group you’re looking for.  Hopefully this helps out.